Philip Ruff
@ruffphilip
Anarchist historian with a weakness for Latvia, good music and things that go bump in the night. Anarhistu vēsturnieks.
Me, Mum and Dad, Big Brother and Sister - and the prefab we lived in until I was five-years-old. The prefabs, on the Bells Farm Estate, Druids Heath, Birmingham, were built by German POWs in 1945, assembled from sheets of asbestos. No "Health & Safety" in the 1950s!
"I want to thank Looby-Loo and Teddy, who have always been there for me" Just to be clear, a leadership election with only one candidate is called a COUP.
Today in 1789, the French Revolution began - 900 revolutionaries and a regiment of French Guards stormed the Bastille in Paris, the symbol of Royal oppression. Poster: a celebration of Bastille Day organised by French anarchist exiles in London, Friday 14 July, 1893.
Happy 250th Birthday, America! 🦝 Celebrating a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white males who didn't want to pay their taxes.
#OTD 1 July 1876, Michael Bakunin died in Bern, Switzerland, aged only 62. It was Bakunin, in his arguments with Marx, who first defined anarchism as a separate political movement, and not just part of the package-deal-left. I wish more "anarchists" would bother to read him. 🏴
"Līgo" / "Jāņi" is the Midsummer festival, celebrated in Latvia on 23-24 June. In pagan times, Jānis was the God of Summer, fertility, and the Summer Solstice. Christianity demoted him to "Saint John". But the ancient pagan rituals remain in the modern celebrations. Priecīgus Līgo svētkus!
And on Bakunin's birthday, don't forget the anarchist fighters in Ukraine who are still resisting Russian military occupation. 🌻
Happy birthday Michael Bakunin, father of modern anarchism, born 30 May, 1814. 🏴
In memoriam: Andrejs Ritins Born, Hamburg, Germany, 14 September, 1946 Died, Canada, 10 May, 2026 RIP 🍃
Happy Mothers' Day, Mum - Winifred Mary Ruff (nee Holloway, 19 June, 1921/ 25 December, 2001) - and to all mums out there. 🌹🥂
Me outside an exhibition of Stalinist kitsch, Riga, 21 June, 1989 (Photo: David Campbell).
Older but arguably no wiser, outside what used to be the almost historic Centro Iberico (June 1973 - September 1976), 23 April 2018. Miguel Garcia in the kitchen, Albert Meltzer giving-forth in the meeting room and me as the third Musketeer, 1975. #AnarchistBlackCross #BlackFlag
Soviet poet, body-builder & futurist Vladimir Goltzschmidt hypnotizing a chicken, 1930s 🐓
In 1882, Karl Marx visited Algiers. Because of the heat, he had his hair cut and beard trimmed. But please don't ask me to tell that story about him getting drunk afterwards and waking up two days later with a camel tattooed on his bum. It's bad for my image as a serious historian. 🐫
The Confession, written by Bakunin in solitary confinement in the Peter & Paul Fortress, 1851. From his arrival in Berlin in 1840 to his arrest by the Saxon police in May 1849 for his part in the Dresden uprising. And Penal Servitude and Exile (about Bakunin), Moscow, 1926.
April 2025, JD Vance shakes hands with Pope Francis - the Pope dies. April 2026, JD Vance shakes hands with Viktor Orban - Orban is voted out of office after 16 years in power. Who's next? 🤔